MR. KAUFMAN: Good morning. My name is Christopher Kaufman. I'm the Program Director at Rural Vermont, a grassroots family farm advocacy organization with over 3,000 members in the state. I hold a Master's degree in international development from the London School of Economics and have spent much of the last ten years working with grassroots organizations to build alternatives to the trade and investment structures promoted by international financial institutions, including GATT, now the World Trade Organization.

The WTO is a fundamentally flawed institution for at least two major reasons. First, it undermines the democratic process by handing over power to unelected, unaccountable trade officials in Geneva. It is structurally designed to destroy the ability of local, state and federal governments to promote environmental protection, economic justice and human rights. The WTO fails to consider, and indeed deliberately subverts, the single- minded, ideologically driven push to open borders to trade at the lowest common denominator. Democratically mandated legislation, such as the U.S. Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act, suffers the tyranny of the WTO as its unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats dismantle such legislation piece by piece to promote so-called free trade. One U.S. trade official estimated that up to 80 percent of U.S. environmental law is in violation of the WTO's rules. With each new trade dispute, the American people could find themselves losing ground in our hard-fought battle to protect the environment, human health, farmers and other workers.

Secondly, it demands that all producers, in agriculture and industry, compete on the world market, ignoring widely variant costs of production in different regions of the world. American dairy farmers should not be forced to compete in the world market because the cost of production for dairy farmers in Vermont is almost three times higher than the world market price per hundred weight of milk. Forcing competition on a global scale will undermine community food security at the local level by pushing small farmers out of business. Insulating Vermont's farmers from a pricing disaster in which the price is a third the cost of production is not a question of protectionism but rather a recognition that costs vary by region and that markets should be limited in their scope in order to account for these variances. Keeping farmers on the land is essential to building healthy rural communities and maintaining food security. The WTO advocates the exact opposite, basing its position on the free market premise that prices should be a determining factor in economic decisionmaking. The WTO would advocate that Vermont's dairy industry disappear wholesale if it could not compete with $6 milk from New Zealand.

It is not just American democratic processes and economic systems that are threatened by the WTO. All WTO member countries could suffer the consequences of giving up control of decision-making processes to the shadowing governance of the WTO. At Rural Vermont, we stand in solidarity with fellow citizens and farmers in Europe and Asia who have been advocating for a ban on imports of genetically modified organisms. Despite the demonstrated power of the WTO to dismantle the United States' own laws, as in the case of dolphin safe tuna, turtle safe shrimp and the Clean Air Act, the U.S. is pushing the WTO to expand its authority over new technologies. This could lead to a WTO decision forcing European and Asian countries with demonstrated scientific concerns about the safety of GMOs to accept these dangerous products for sale in their markets.

This type of violation, in which governments are forced to ignore democratic mandates and scientific evidence, cannot be allowed to continue. The U.S. Government should demand that the power of the WTO be reduced if not eliminated and not expanded at the expense of the democracy. Our own government's experience in losing cases before the WTO tribunals should be reason enough to advocate restricting the power of the institution, notwithstanding the experience of Asian and European countries working to stop the importation of dangerous GMOs like recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, bt corn and potatoes and Round-Up Ready Soybeans.

Rural Vermont, as a grassroots farmers organization that works to promote sustainable farming and economic justice, is particularly concerned about the spread of rBGH, a genetically manufactured drug and injected into cows to force them to produce more milk. While rGBH and other GMOs may make a tidy profit for giant agri-businesses like Monsanto, it undermines the ability of small farmers to compete in a market that is already experiencing record low commodity prices. The WTO is hoping to expand its agenda to push GMOs on countries which have categorically rejected them. rBGH will further depress milk prices worldwide, taking money away from farmers and putting it into the pockets of Monsanto. The drug is currently banned for this reason and others in the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Farmer members of Rural Vermont point to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that rBGH is harmful to cows and humans and --

MR. ALLBEE: Can you summarize?

MR. KAUFMAN: I'm wrapping up -- and contributes to an over-supply of milk in the U.S. This over-supply is currently driving milk prices to record lows and has forced farmers out of business. Other countries which have banned rBGH have done so out of concern for the potential economic, social and environmental impacts of its use. These concerns are not considered valid reasons for trade restrictions by the WTO.

Despite the legitimate national interest that governments have in promoting healthy, environmentally and economically sound communities, the WTO is able to override that national interest. The WTO should be scrapped and new trade regimes should be developed which would help the environment, sustainable farming, workers rights and consumer safety.

Thank you. (Applause.)

MR. ALLBEE: Thank you.

MR. ACETO: Just a comment. I'm hearing a kind of concern about our policy regarding promotion of our products and our imposing these products on other countries. I just have to say this from my perspective as one who has worked on this issue. I see it a little differently. I think what we are looking for around the country is a process on their part that we can understand this predicament. We, of course, have not questioned whether the Europeans -- all we are really asking for is some kind of process that we can depend on so we will know whether or not we are -- just to cite an example, commit -- it's in fact approved by the committees, and so at which time -- the from us -- is more than the process. I don't see that as trying to force the -- (inaudible.)

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We are finding it hard to hear, so when you're speaking --